North Korea launches test ballistic missile for the 1st time in almost a year
North Korea not only successfully launched on October 30, 2024 a test ballistic missile for the 1st time in almost a year, the missile set a new altitude record, reaching an altitude of 4,350 miles, more than a thousand miles higher than the country’s previous missile record.
Japanese Defense Minister Gen Nakatani told reporters the missile’s flight duration of 86 minutes and its maximum altitude of more than 7,000 kilometers (4,350 miles) exceeded corresponding data from previous North Korean missile tests.
Having a missile fly higher and for a longer duration than before means its engine thrust has improved. Given that previous ICBM tests by North Korea have already proved they can theoretically reach the U.S. mainland, the latest launch was likely related to an effort to examine whether a missile can carry a bigger warhead, experts say.
In other words, North Korea is getting very close to having an operational ICBM that can deliver a nuclear warhead anywhere on the globe. Worse, it appears this solid-fueled rocket launches from a large mobile vehicle, making it impossible to locate and destroy beforehand.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
North Korea not only successfully launched on October 30, 2024 a test ballistic missile for the 1st time in almost a year, the missile set a new altitude record, reaching an altitude of 4,350 miles, more than a thousand miles higher than the country’s previous missile record.
Japanese Defense Minister Gen Nakatani told reporters the missile’s flight duration of 86 minutes and its maximum altitude of more than 7,000 kilometers (4,350 miles) exceeded corresponding data from previous North Korean missile tests.
Having a missile fly higher and for a longer duration than before means its engine thrust has improved. Given that previous ICBM tests by North Korea have already proved they can theoretically reach the U.S. mainland, the latest launch was likely related to an effort to examine whether a missile can carry a bigger warhead, experts say.
In other words, North Korea is getting very close to having an operational ICBM that can deliver a nuclear warhead anywhere on the globe. Worse, it appears this solid-fueled rocket launches from a large mobile vehicle, making it impossible to locate and destroy beforehand.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
It’s perfectly possible to find and destroy missiles being carried around on transporter-erector-launchers (TELs) be they Russian, Chinese, North Korean, Iranian or what-have-you. These are large motor vehicles. Synthetic aperture radars (SARs) can easily spot objects far smaller than any TEL currently in service.
But, in order to track such objects in real-time, one needs a constellation of SARsats large enough to keep continuous watch on enemy territory 24/7/365. The U.S., so far as I know, does not yet have such capability though we finally seem to be moving in that direction. Whether any of the commercial SAR imagery companies have satellite constellations large enough to allow such unblinking-eye coverage I do not know. I’m not even sure if the DoD could cobble together such a capability by buying continuous data streams from all such imagery vendors in combination.
We have no such capability because, up until five years ago, our military space stuff was all under the control of the morons at USAF – the sons and daughters of the USAF fools who wanted nothing to do with GPS back in the 80s because it was a Navy program. As the late Gen. Curtis LeMay once famously said, “You have to understand that the Soviet Union is our opponent. Our enemy is the U.S. Navy.”
So we have no Argus-eyed SAR coverage for the same reason we have no VLEO interceptor platforms capable of shooting down any rockets rising from enemy territory – the idiots at USAF, and the even bigger idiots that have run this country as a bi-partisan oligarchy for a century or more think that building such things would be “provocative” and “de-stabilizing.” Weakness, dithering and idiocy are provocative and destabilizing and we’ve had more than our fill of all three for far too long.
They killed the ABMA—their greatest crime. Medaris had high hopes for Saturn I.
As for space based radar
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discoverer_II
Early on, I had hoped what was then called Ares V would be flying with DoD forced to use it:
https://phys.org/news/2007-06-big-space-telescopes.amp
The 150 meter dish that could be used for radio astronomy—that and large space based radars could be lofted by Starship…but I wonder if some of the folks in USSF are plants…all I read about is smallsat this and smallsat that.
Are space advocates really in power at USSF?
Jeff Wright,
ABMA was about missile development, not missile defense. Reagan-era organizations that were about missile defense have been kept, since, from doing anything much to actually implement it in any robust fashion, though the largely useless organizations have been kept around because our ruling statists have a very difficult time closing down any government organization.
Ares V was a huge, insanely expensive, completely disposable rocket with a pathetic potential production rate – just like SLS, which is, in essence, Ares V with a different coat of paint. As such, it would have had no useful role to play in anything defense-related just as has proven repeatedly true of SLS.
Useful SARsats don’t have to be enormous and are not. As their name says, they rely on a synthetic aperture that is created by their motion relative to the ground being scanned. The whole point of SAR is that one can get the data one needs without launching gigantic satellites with actual giant apertures. Thus, SARsats are a perfect fit for the sort of proliferated and distributed LEO satellite architecture the USSF is now rushing into service.
Are there space advocates in the USSF? Yes. Lots of them. What there are not in the USSF are nostalgiasts and ardent admirers of useless and obsolete bad ideas from the past.
A a big dish still has its uses—if Starship really does fly often, larger assets could be looked at.